Pacific Quakers Meekly Reintroduce War Tax Resistance Tradition

As I alluded to
about a month ago, a group of Quakers
from the Pacific Yearly Meeting is trying to reinvigorate the tradition of
Quaker war tax resistance.

Some of them are resisting their taxes in some way, and a couple of them are
trying to get the government to recognize their conscientious objection to
military taxation by means of legal challenges.

But most of what they seem to be asking their fellow Quakers to do in this
campaign is to “Pay Under Protest” — in which they would pay their taxes just
as usual, but would then write their Congressional representatives to complain
about the injustice of it all.

Their literature plays up this “Pay Under Protest” campaign as being “a
campaign for war tax resisters” and a way to “take a stand against war taxes”
as though writing a letter to your congressperson were actually a form of tax
resistance.

I think the organizers see this as a way for potential resisters to dip their
toes in the war tax resistance pool, and at least to get thinking about how
they might confront their taxpayer complicity. By enabling people safely and
easily to get just a little forward momentum in this area, perhaps the
campaign will cause them eventually to adopt some genuine war tax resistance
tactics.

I’m worried that such an approach might backfire, and make it seem as though
since the organizers are demanding only a small, insignificant, useless
gesture, they must not be motivated by a very urgent concern.

Telling a Quaker that when she pays her taxes she’s buying war and that she
should therefore start paying under protest is like telling a smoker that
you’re concerned that he is in danger of cancer, heart disease, and emphysema
and so you think he should start smoking under protest. (How concerned are you
really?)

The campaigners have convinced the Palo Alto Meeting to approve the following
minute on war taxes:

As a faith community, we believe that war violates our shared religious
conviction that we should love our enemies and acknowledge and nourish that
of God in every life.

We declare as a corporate body our objection to paying war waxes. We express
our conviction in acts of individual witness ranging from letters of protest
to government officials to acts of civil disobedience.

Nice that it merits mention, but pretty weak sauce. Compare that vague
expression of disapproval with the unambiguous declaration of conduct that
the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting put out back in the day (this version comes
from the Rules of Discipline of
1893; I’m not sure when it was originally
adopted):

It is the judgment of this meeting that a tax levied for the purchasing of
drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with
our Christian testimony.

If you would like to assist in the effort to reinvigorate war tax resistance
in the Pacific Yearly Meeting, or if you are a Pacific Yearly Meeting Quaker
who practices some form of war tax resistance or protest and you would like to
add your name to their list, contact
Elizabeth Boardman, one of
the campaign organizers.

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